SCIE20001: Thinking Scientifically

3 Online Quizzes (16.67%), Four Module Assessment Tasks (16.67% each) including one quiz in one assessment task, Take home final exam (16.67%)

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Andrew Drinnan, Sue Finch, Heather Gaunt, Ian Martin

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3.5 Out of 5

Science Communication Module (Week 1-3) : This module involves 7 videos (around 15 minutes each) which explain the different methods through which science can be communicated to the public and the advantages/disadvantages of each method. The assessment for this module is worth 16.67% and involves two blog posts on a particular scientific issue. I found that the videos were quite useless and you could get a very good mark on the assessment by simply watching the video explaining the assessment.

Observation module (Week 4-6): This module involves 5 videos (around 30 mins each) which explain how scientific observations are made and the difference between objective and subjective observations. The assessment task involves making a series of objective observations (20 dot points, 800 words) and a short subjective interpretation (200 words). Similar to the first module, I found the videos quite useless and just watched the assessment video which explains in detail what is required, with an example.

Thinking with Data module (Week 7-9): This module was probably the most challenging part of the course, and the videos for this module were quite detailed. I would recommend watching the videos at least twice before you attempt any of the quizzes or the assignment. The assessment page for this subject is quite misleading as the Three quizzes (16.7%) sounds like they would be equally distributed throughout the semester but infact the three quizzes only examine this part of the subject. Essentially, this module is worth 33% of the whole subject which is almost double the exam, but this is made up by the fact that the exam does not examine this part of the subject. The assessment for this part consists of three quizzes (16.67% total) and an 'assignment' which involves a powerpoint presentation (12%) analysing a particular study's research method followed by a subsequent quiz about the study (4.7%). This is probably the most important part of the subject in terms of marks, and the videos are quite useful. Honestly, almost all of the marks I lost for the subject were from this module (due to a lack of effort on my part) and if you put enough effort into this module a 95+ in the subject is definitely possible.

Science in the media module (Week 10-12): This is probably the easiest part of this course (with the exception of the exam) and it is easy to score highly on the assignment (16.67%) without even watching the videos. Essentially it just involves critiquing a scientific newspaper article from certain major newspapers (e.g. The Age, New York Times, Herald Sun, etc). and showing how the science in the article was misreported. I'd recommend going for a sub par newspaper from the list as you are likely to find many more mistakes.

General content: There are some videos uploaded throughout the semester which are general content on the philosophy of science, research methods, etc. I found these videos quite useless.

The exam (16.67%) : The exam was just a take home exam of 1000 words in which you are given an article or a series of articles and asked to answer short questions (total of 1000 words). I don't think I used any of the concepts from the course and still scored 99% on the final exam.

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N/A (This subject is taught online)

2016, Semester 2

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